Then, suddenly, all hell was loose; people swarming this way and that across the floor. Among all the official and important-seeming people, Rath recognised Grunert, the hotel detective.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘I’d never have thought something like this could happen,’ Grunert said. ‘Not with the police themselves watching him.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Come and see for yourself.’
Rath feared the worst when he stepped inside. Could Goldstein be lying dead? Of boredom? Or had he taken his own life? Perhaps some rival gangster had managed to kill him? Someone who had scaled the hotel front? Or a sniper who had lain in wait on the roof of Anhalter Bahnhof?
No one was lying dead, neither on the bed nor in the bathtub. Any number of people stood inside the luxurious suite and yet it seemed lifeless. Sterile. Even if the bed wasn’t made, and the bins hadn’t been emptied. Rath followed Grunert into the bedroom. The hotel detective moved over to the wardrobe and opened the doors, where he was confronted by the clatter of empty rails, and a void of empty shelves.
‘Gone,’ Grunert said. ‘Your guest’s done a runner.’
It took Rath a moment to realise that he had a problem. A missing Goldstein was worse than a dead Goldstein.
Now you know how Charly must have felt, he thought, and sank into the nearest chair.
Part II
Punishment
56
The wound was healing well. A scar stretched across the back of Alex’s hand, a keepsake, but there was nothing she could do about that. Too bad, she thought, but you were never the prettiest anyway. She gave her reflection a wry smile, threw the blood-soaked bandage in the rubbish and bound her hand with a fresh dressing. At the window she looked outside. She’d sooner be splashing through puddles like the kids downstairs than sitting up here holding her breath at footsteps on the stairs.
She was alone in the flat. Martha and Helmut were out; her sister-in-law had insisted on heading to the country with her husband. Helmut had suggested staying home to play cards, but saw the look on Martha’s face and yielded. Alex sympathised with her sister-in-law. It wasn’t just the sultry, warm weather that made her insist on the journey to Köpenick; a trip to the countryside meant a day without Alex.
Yesterday evening they had huddled together in the cramped flat and played cards, just like old times, when Alex and Helmut still lived with their parents and occasionally managed to persuade Mother to join in a hand of skat. It was Helmut’s idea and the game had lasted the whole evening. Alex would rather Helmut had taken Martha to the cinema or out dancing, but he wouldn’t be dissuaded. Martha dutifully fetched beer from the cellar and said nothing, even if her eyes told a different story.
It was too much. Alex had imposed upon her brother’s hospitality for long enough. She had enjoyed a roof over her head, eaten as much as she liked and licked her wounds. Now it was time to move on.
That woman, the court assistant or whatever she was, hadn’t come back. Alex couldn’t believe that she had appeared outside the door to ask her stupid questions. At the last moment she had hidden in the cubbyhole by the sink alongside scrubbers, brushes and preserves, and tried to breathe as quietly as possible. In the end the woman stayed outside in the stairwell. When she asked, in all seriousness, if Alexandra – Alex had almost forgotten that was her real name – might be staying with her parents, she almost laughed out loud. With her olds! Emil Reinhold, who let his own daughter fend for herself on the streets? Who had disowned his son? The woman had no idea.
Yet she couldn’t be completely stupid either. She had managed to find out Alex’s name, as well as Helmut’s address. This, despite the fact that Alex hadn’t said a word while she was in custody, or indeed afterwards. She had been scared stiff by all those blue uniforms, more frightened, even, than at KaDeWe when they chased her, or later when that cop opened fire.
Benny’s killer.
The whole time she had been in custody, she was afraid he might appear to finish the job. Each night she dreamed of him, his mug against hers, close enough to see every pore of the face she had marked for life. And then of Benny plunging silently to his death, every night plunging headlong to the ground. High above, the same face stared over the balustrade, grinning, sweating.
She’d recognise it twenty years from now, but she didn’t intend to wait that long.
She felt a kind of longing for the old factory. Not for the draughty corridors where she tried to sleep, but for the people, for Vicky and Fanny, Kotze and Felix. She’d have to accept that Kralle and his band of rats came with the package. There are two sides to everything.
Another of Benny’s phrases. God, she missed him!
If he was right, and everything good had its bad side, then didn’t everything bad have its good side too? Try as she might, she couldn’t find anything good about her situation, but perhaps all she needed was a few more days. At least she had seen Helmut again. Without all the shit that had happened to her, she’d never have dared turn up at his door. She was too ashamed of what she had done, of what Karl had done, but her big brother had taken her in his arms, and, suddenly, she didn’t feel the least ashamed of anything that had happened before Christmas. It was the first time she hadn’t celebrated the day. How many more Christmases would go uncelebrated? She couldn’t picture it happening in the old axle factory, anyway.
Beckmann’s death was such a joke. She didn’t mourn the Nazi, but hadn’t wanted him dead. Still, it was her fault; without her stupid idea it would never have happened. Without Alexandra Reinhold, Heinrich Beckmann would still be alive, damn it.
What a crackpot idea, paying the rent with stolen money. No one understood that she was trying to help, not her father who had thrown her out, nor her brother who thought she needed protection. It was Karl who had pulled the trigger, the idiot. How she missed him!
Helmut was the only one who’d been able to get on with his life, because he had cut ties and gone his own way. That was why she felt so ashamed about Beckmann. Only now, with her despair outweighing her shame, had she confided in him, and soon realised that all her worries were for nothing.
Without her brother she wouldn’t have survived the past few days.
She rummaged in the kitchen table drawer for the paper and pencil Martha used to write her shopping lists. She sat down to think, and suddenly knew what she was going to write. The pencil scratched across the page. Somewhere outside a car beeped its horn.
57
Bernhard Weiss spent most weekends at his private home in Dahlem, away from his official residence in Charlottenburg. As he turned into the tree-lined Bachstelzenweg, Rath could see why. No problem finding a parking spot here. Most people had their own garages. The only sound he heard when he cut the engine was the twittering of birds.
He had made the journey with mixed feelings. Weiss was his sole principal in the Goldstein affair, but, since he was at a summit in Breslau on Saturday, Rath had spent the day with Hotel Detective Grunert reconstructing the man’s disappearance. They had done a reasonable job, but Rath’s hopes of picking up the gangster’s trail before reporting to Weiss had been shattered. The Yank had disappeared and could be anywhere in this four-million-strong city. Why had he gone to ground? What had he done or, worse, what was he about to do?